wombatgirl

Jade Teapot sample

Zarafina brewed at the black/loose/strong setting

Smells divine – the vanilla blends into the tea base aroma beautifully.

I drank it with milk and sweetner, my personal preference for the darker teas, and it was lovely. No bitterness, full mouth-taste, and the flavor of the vanilla blended well with the milk.

Lovely tea. A mellow, soothing tea.

Like the others, I got my sample from the Jade Teapot. Unlike the others, I was having a harder time tasting the blood orange through the rooibos. I think that I’m more sensitive to the rooibos taste than most, making some teas that are amazing for others tasting overly woody to me. This tea was good, but not one that is inspiring song and visions of large orders.

I do just need to say that the free sample from the Jade Teapot was very generous and shipped quickly. I’m very much hoping I fall in love with one of my samples, because I want to give this company my custom. Thanks Jade Teapot for being awesome.

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Nice, standard Earl Grey – a little heavy on the Bergamot, I think. I drank this bagged, with milk and sweetner.

Had this, bagged, in my meeting yesterday, and it was the one thing that was making it livable. However, it wasn’t the best of teas – it was just decent. I drank with milk and sugar, and would probably not like much without because there was this background “blea” to the tea that I can’t put my finger on – possibly the black tea base? Icky vanilla beans? Not sure. However, it is a heck of a lot better than the bad coffee they’re offering, or the incessant soda cans.

Hrm. I’ve been looking forward to having this iced. Tonight my hubby decided that’s exactly what we needed to do, so he made it up.

Yeah, this batch needs some help. It’s gonna require a light hand – too strong a brew and it tastes… off. Too light, and there’s no flavor. I will need to experiment with this more. I’m not touching the score because warm, it’s still a good tea, but so far, iced – not so good.

Nice, clean tasting oolong. Smells woody and rich. Yummy. It’s a great workplace tea (Multiple resteeps, doesn’t require sweetner or cream, looks pretty). Not that much of a complex flavor, but nice and warm.

The dry leaf smells slightly smokey, the steeped leaf smells seaweed-ish. The brew is browny-green, and it smells.. not really seaweed-ish nor really green. A mild scent of green tea with a hint of something more, and a hint of seaweed.

The flavor is on the bitter side, and vegetal. I need to try this again with a thermometer – I just used the pouring cooling method to get it close. As it is, I’m not fond of this tea.

I think this is the tea I’m drinking. I got a sample from Lena, and it had the name but not the company.

Assuming this is it, it’s a nice chocolate-y tea, but as others have pointed out, not particularity heavy on the pu-erh. I’m betting it would rock with sugar and cream (right now I’ve just got it sweetened). The tea is slightly bitter, but it blends well with the bitter of the chocolate flavor, and overall, it’s just nice and smooth.

Good tea. I think I need a second cup.

Let my mistake be a reminder to us all – temperatures really matter.

The Sainted Lena gave me some of this tea the other night. It’s the first tea I ever remember putting on my shopping list. I’ve been wanting to try this forever. I’m in a hotel without anything but a little coffee maker, but I did bring my gaiwan.

And I thought – eh, it’s probably around 190, definitely not boiling, and I’ve got an appropriate vessel. I’ll give it a shot.

Yeah, well… maybe not the best idea. This is not the glorious “experience” others have had. IThank goodness I have a little more to give it a go at home, because I’m a little dissapointed. I know this tea from the aroma can be better.

Also – even though it mentions gaiwan brewing, this is not really ideally suited to it. At least not from my limited gaiwan experience. Big-leafed oolongs are great in a gaiwan, but I’ve been picking ancient yellow buds out of my teeth so far too. Blea.

Let’s all cross our fingers that my weekend tasting experience with this tea goes a lot better.

I’m wondering if this is more of a spearmint rather than a peppermint. (Looking at the packaging it just says mint) It’s a darker taste than I expected. I think I prefer the brighter, lighter taste of peppermint. This is a nice tea, and it’s helping me get through an evening of massive overtime, but I’d rather drink a cup of Celestial Seasonings Peppermint.

But, as far as mints go, it’s pretty decent.

This is the proverbial “not my cup of tea.”

Now, I should have know better, because there are very few chamomile teas I really like. But, I’m at this training facility today, and their tea selection is very limited. So I thought I’d give it a go.

I should have skipped it. I thought the flavors were kind of.. meh. And I thought it smelled bad. I feel like I’m pointing fingers and singing like a grade schooler "Nya, nya, nya-nya nay – you smell bad!’ but I really don’t have any other descriptions. It was just icky. My mouth + Calm = not happy.

I think if you like chamomile, this might be more for you.

It’s good for the flavia machine.. but… still.

It’s got the jasmine down but the green tea is a little tortured. Who was it that threatened to take a packet apart? I’m thinking about doing that sometime this week – something to do in the evenings.

I’ll get better tea tonight! World Cup of Tea, here I come!

Oh happy day!

I found this tea under a slightly different name at the World Cup of Tea in Franklin TN. I teased Lena that I was going to have to buy an entire pound of it while I was down there next week. Because I love this tea.

But! I just attended a class at a local tea shop (called Tea Market on 55th and Brookside for any other Kansas City folk on here) which was wonderfully informative AND I found out that they carried the same type of cinnamon tea! Smelled the same, looked the same, and most importantly TASTES the same.

YAY!

Plus, they’re the type of shop that gives you a tin when you buy over 2oz, so you don’t have to worry about finding another container, etc. Great shop and I LOVE THIS TEA! Very cinnamon, very red-hots-y. I don’t find myself wanting to sweeten it either, which is very odd for me.

This tea took a while to grow on me.
(Before you start reading, I sweeten things a lot. Just know this about me)

This tea always will remind you of it’s namesake. It has that carrot cake-y taste to it. Unlike the bake-y flavor often noted on the black teas, this definitely has a cake-y taste. Like the aftertaste you’d have in your mouth after eating a bit of that yummy cake-y goodness. My initial problem was that I only added half as much sweetener as I normally would, and I kept thinking the tea was lacking. Then I realized what I thought was missing-the cream cheese frosting. It tasted exactly like the inside of the cake, but where was the frosting?? This is necessary people. What is Carrot Cake without the cream cheese frosting? It’s a pompous muffin. Feh.

So I did it again, and added my preferred amount of sweetener and then added milk to help with the cream cheese deficiency. Ah! There it is. This is right. Now this is a dessert tea I can get behind.

Husband prefers it without the milk. So, obviously, your mileage may vary.

This even got a decent re-steep (with a bit of a crutch), which I found impressive. I’ve never had good luck re-steeping rooibos.

I will enjoy the rest of this packet, but probably won’t order more. It’s a good tea. Very good tea, but maybe not my cup of tea.

Hm.

Hm…..

So. The dry leaf smells a little artificial and like they added cough syrup to the base. But, as we know, the smell and the taste are often very different.

But I dunno.. I’m still deciding if this tastes like cough syrup or not. I think if my cough syrup tasted like this, I’d really like the syrup. But.. that’s really not a reccomendation for a tea, is it? For me, it’s also getting a little more chemical and artifical as it cools down.

Yeah, I don’t really like this.

Ah well. Worth giving it’s a shot.

So, I finally got the Zarafina I ordered some time last century. (Or maybe the beginning of the month, I forget which.) It was very, very used. To the point where I was worried it would still work when I took it out of the box. But I got it all cleaned up, figured out how it all went together, and then thought about what I should baptize it with.

I decided that an Earl Grey would be good, and opening my cupboard, the A&D tea darn near fell on me. Right then. A&D Earl Grey it would be then.

So I looked at all the dials, read the instructions twice, and just jumped in. And it worked fine!

And the tea was good, as usual. Yummy. The bergamot was bold, the tea was lovely and just – YUM. I love this tea. If you like an Earl Grey that is loud and lovely, this is for you.

It’s a nice standard oolong. Nice brown, dark aroma, decent flavor, and it provides a goodly number of resteeps. It’s my current go-to-tea for work days.

I’ve been reading a lot about other steepsterites doing chai in the traditional way, and I had some Masala Chai I hadn’t tried yet, so hey – perfect!

The scent of the leaves was pop-you-in the face amazing. Very, very spicy, very strong. Yum! I love strong flavors, strong spices, and this looked to be a good experiment.

Boiled the leaf, added the milk, let it rest, all the while almost wanting to lick the air because it smelled so good. Then, finally, it was done, and it was time to drink.

Warm, creamy, sweet milk with.. um.. hey! Where’d my chai go?
I must have not added enough chai, because while it was very tasty, it was a very wussy taste. I think of Chai as powerful and strong, and the leaves smelled that way. So I’m leaving off the rating until I try it again. (I used Lena’s recipes from here http://steepster.com/discuss/25-chai which said 2 heaping spoons. I added 2.5 heaping teaspoons. Should that be tablespoons? I always think of tea in teaspoons, so I may have flubbed this. Any suggestions?)

Opening the bag, the aroma overwhelms you. It’s like the best piece of baklava you’ve ever tasted. It’s caramel and walnut and condensed yum. It smells AWESOME.

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite hold up for me after that point. The brew I got was a little weak and flavorless. Once I swallowed, the flavor of walnut and caramel grew on my toungue, but then started to turn into bananas once the tea started to cool. Bananas? Really? I don’t tend to like bananas in my baklava.

I will definitely be trying this again, because it’s got such promise… it just doesn’t seem to be following through for me at this point.

I need a good wake-up tea this morning, and this is definitely fulfilling that need! Sweet, cinnamon-y, and warm, both in temperature and in flavor.

Yum!

First time I tried this, I thought it was a bit weak and flavorless. So I tried it again with a little more leaf in the brew, and added splenda and sugar. It’s lovely now. The chocolate is delicate, but blends well with the mint and the tea adds lovely background support.

I’ve been thinking about this tea for a little while, and so I knew it was time to make some more. It’s shocking how good this smells, even when you’re “braced” for it. I just love how it tastes so much like lemon cake, complete with frosting.

No dessert for me tonight, just a cuppa of this with a little sweetener. I’m more than good to go. (bumping my rating just a little)